Your graphic is basically already possible to create with Magic Rune, and it's similar in principle to what I use. I set up something simple and non-intrusive-- it's small and sits under my character. I wanted something I didn't have to look at, which is sort of the point. When you're raiding or pvping, you can't stare at rune cooldowns or debuffs. You have to be able to get that information quickly and easily when you want it. So what I settled on was small, short bars, using the alpha settings to make ready runes obvious. The alpha is about 25% for runes on cooldown, so you can see their timer if you look, but the runes off cooldown are the most visible at a glance. Alpha is set to 0 when out of combat to hide the display.

I've been using Dristig RunePack mod for weeks now and the recent changes have been icing on the cake. It is an excellent rune addon that is ready to go out of the box. I highly recommend it.

I'm using ForteWarlock (or ForteXorcist, whatever), for cooldowns, and you can either rightclick the icons you want to ignore, or set them yourself in the options menu under Filtering -> Customize.
Works great for me and the reason I like it so much is because it's just a single bar with all my cooldowns instead of a seperate bar for every cooldown .

Yes, many addons allow you to blacklist spells, and that's great. I can blacklist a ton of spells that don't have actual cooldowns. But it doesn't solve the problem. Abilities I do want to know the cooldown of still have a rune cost and improperly appear as on cooldown when the runes are used up.

TellMeWhen: Yes, I can make it only show what I want, but what I want shows up at improper times because of rune cooldowns. Not to mention I don't like the setup, from what I can find it has no way of telling me how long a cooldown has left.

The one addon I have found that KIND OF works how I want it to is CooldownWatch. It doesn't seem to show abilities when their runes are used up, it probably works different from most cooldown mods. However, whenever you actually use an ability, then use all it's runes, it freaks out and makes giant bars across the screen. Not to mention it has various bugs, can't display pet cooldowns as-is, and is tedious to setup, with the end result not being very effective as an actual cooldown display (I've tried it before, I just don't like it).

All in all, it's extremely frustrating, and I hope Blizzard changes it, or someone comes up with a good solution via mods.



On the subject of actual rune displays, I think people should be taking another look at OOC alpha fading if you plan to do any PvP or are even on a PvP server. Especially if you're fighting a class like a rogue that tries to get out of combat, it isn't a good idea. I can understand not wanting it in your face around Dalaran, but there are times where rune usage is crucial outside of combat.

This is the kind of thing I would like to see for the rune mod. Clean and simple, with square buttons, and compatible with button facade. The timer for the buttons could go something like a fade or could have an omnicc/cooldown count type capability.

Something like this.

In my experience Omnicc does put a cooldown count on your runes.

Your animations remind me of Runica by Lyn, might wanna check it out.
(works with Omnicc and BF)

You can make something very similiar to that with Magic Runes. Disable bars, add CC to runes and voila.

Thanks guys these are both really good and pretty much what I was looking for. Unfortunately Runica has no config menu, you can only edit it through lua. Im not that savvy. Magic rune is great too, you cant get the square buttons or BF capability but I think its the one I am gonna go with. If I only they could become one together.

Some things we might want to consider from a usability perspective is a little bit of eye-tracking software. That is:
When we need to access information as quickly as possible, where is the best place to put it?

There is a law in design that states that the 4 corners of the screen are the easiest places to click, but we should be doing some basic usability testing for things like:

Where is the mouse pointer of most players kept? If it is near the mobs, then that is where the players' eyes are focused and it makes more sense to create a design that is compact and presents information at a glance.

What area of the screen is the easiest to see?
Which area is most important to not block?

In terms of design, I'm a minimalist so I think it's prudent to do the following with my rune addon:

1. Compact it
2. Move it
3. And only need to glance to get the info I need.

So, by those standards I think the best (read: quickest) design is going to be something with no more than 4 "spheres" (Blood, unholy, frost, and death) with a quick numerical indicator saying how many of each rune is available. This does, however, bring into question showing rune loading times, and for that I think we should look to the "layered" spheres where you can graphically (at a glance) get a rough idea of what your wait time is going to be like for that next rune.

That's my 2 cents.

Neotron, Can you add the option to hide the icons on the bars when the rune is not available?

In other words, if I see the icon I can assume the rune is ready otherwise I just see the bar.
Additionally, can you add a border/endcap option so i can eyeball the end of the bar.
Any chance we can float a cooldown countdown over the bars?

I've slowed way down once I got Rune Pack stable because I need to hit 80, yes I'm not even 80 yet. I'm using Classtimer for my diseases and it is functional so It might be a while before I get Death Board going.